A live demonstration was done to show how a 700-page file could be scanned in about six minutes and an e-file was retrieved from the system in about five minutes.Aman Sharma | ET Bureau | September 09, 2016, 08:19 IST

NEW DELHI: Excessive YouTube viewing in offices that clog the bandwidth and small computer monitors allotted to junior officials which hamper their ability to see digitised files, seem to be the two big challenges to the government’s ambitious e-office project.

The issue emerged at an e-office workshop organised for all ministries on Thursday where the rural development ministry, which is among the first to fully implement e-office, briefed how to accomplish the task of digitising all files and move to a paper-less office.

A live demonstration was done to show how a 700-page file could be scanned in about six minutes and an e-file was retrieved from the system in about five minutes.

It was also said Cabinet Secretary PK Sinha would soon write to all secretaries, asking them to specify a cutoff date after which they and their joint secretaries would not be accepting any physical files.

But Rural Development Ministry Joint Secretary Santosh Mathew, in his presentation, flagged the two tricky issues. “Sufficiency of bandwidth is an issue. It is said that 30 per cent of people in government work and 70 per cent watch videos on You-Tube, choking the bandwidth. Please tell your officials that logs can be pulled out to detect who is watching how much YouTube … this e-office will not succeed if this is not checked,” Mathew said. He said computer monitors at lower levels (where the file is initiated) were too small and adequate RAM in them was an issue.

“Physical files have two sides — correspondence and the noting side. On a small monitor, a junior official is not able to see it properly,” he said. Senior officers don’t have this problem as they have large monitors.

“In the government, a secretary’s computer goes down to the joint secretary and so on down the levels,” Mathew said. He added it was a challenge to encourage the junior officials to adopt e-office since they will end up being monitored. “Rajpath has the most costly real estate in the world. It will be shame if we use it to store paper,” Mathew said.

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